Bulb is waaaaaay too long. You want an exposure in the range of a few to several seconds. Just as with lightning and with flash, aperture controls exposure; shutter speed controls the length of the tracks. Base ISO is good.

The challenge for exposure with fireworks comes when you try to shoot more than just the fireworks themselves, like including upturned faces or the city skyline. There's even going to be a full moon low in the sky on the Fourth...if you can shoot the moon and the fireworks, fantastic, but good luck getting the exposure right....

Bulb is waaaaaay too long. You want an exposure in the range of a few to several seconds. Just as with lightning and with flash, aperture controls exposure; shutter speed controls the length of the tracks. Base ISO is good.

The challenge for exposure with fireworks comes when you try to shoot more than just the fireworks themselves, like including upturned faces or the city skyline. There's even going to be a full moon low in the sky on the Fourth...if you can shoot the moon and the fireworks, fantastic, but good luck getting the exposure right....

Bulb is waaaaaay too long. You want an exposure in the range of a few to several seconds. Just as with lightning and with flash, aperture controls exposure; shutter speed controls the length of the tracks. Base ISO is good.

The challenge for exposure with fireworks comes when you try to shoot more than just the fireworks themselves, like including upturned faces or the city skyline. There's even going to be a full moon low in the sky on the Fourth...if you can shoot the moon and the fireworks, fantastic, but good luck getting the exposure right....

Bulb is waaaaaay too long. You want an exposure in the range of a few to several seconds. Just as with lightning and with flash, aperture controls exposure; shutter speed controls the length of the tracks. Base ISO is good.

The challenge for exposure with fireworks comes when you try to shoot more than just the fireworks themselves, like including upturned faces or the city skyline. There's even going to be a full moon low in the sky on the Fourth...if you can shoot the moon and the fireworks, fantastic, but good luck getting the exposure right....

Bulb is waaaaaay too long. You want an exposure in the range of a few to several seconds. Just as with lightning and with flash, aperture controls exposure; shutter speed controls the length of the tracks. Base ISO is good.

The challenge for exposure with fireworks comes when you try to shoot more than just the fireworks themselves, like including upturned faces or the city skyline. There's even going to be a full moon low in the sky on the Fourth...if you can shoot the moon and the fireworks, fantastic, but good luck getting the exposure right....

This was my first real attempt at shooting fireworks (with a camera). I think it came out pretty good. This was about 6-7+ exposures of anywhere from .5 sec to 15 sec. I stacked them up, and like what I was able to get. I applied what I have been learning from star trail photography to this process, and it gave me a bit more creative freedom. It is especially challenging if you want to get the right exposure on the foreground as well as the fireworks, but taking multiple exposures really is the only way to get it right.

Very nice work! I am just learning the art of composite blending. Spent a while doing mainly HDR work, and I do love it but want to get away from that overly surreal look and the halos. I sense composite blending may be my next big learning assignment (along with really mastering off cam lighting)

This was my first real attempt at shooting fireworks (with a camera). I think it came out pretty good. This was about 6-7+ exposures of anywhere from .5 sec to 15 sec. I stacked them up, and like what I was able to get. I applied what I have been learning from star trail photography to this process, and it gave me a bit more creative freedom. It is especially challenging if you want to get the right exposure on the foreground as well as the fireworks, but taking multiple exposures really is the only way to get it right.

Very nice work! I am just learning the art of composite blending. Spent a while doing mainly HDR work, and I do love it but want to get away from that overly surreal look and the halos. I sense composite blending may be my next big learning assignment (along with really mastering off cam lighting)

Ya blending is really important, and can actually really add to HDR when the two are combined. Also if you do HDR right and really learn how the settings in your tone mapping software work, it can be done without any halos and surreality.

2nd time posting a picture to the forums... But this was my first attempt at fireworks with all the tips gathered from this thread.

It was a small festival with only 3000 fireworks launched lasting only 90 min, and they were all launched form the same area as they all exploded in the exact same spot, so no way to layer the images. In the future i'd probably try shorter exposures as I was sitting at 4-8secs for the most part.

650D 10mm f/14 2 secs exposure.

Btw, if you love fireworks you really should come to Japan. There is a fireworks festival every weekend until Oct. in towns within an hours train ride from me.